


Blood Runs Thick

by AtomicPen



Series: So Show Me Family, All the Blood That I Would Bleed [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Brother relationship, Character Death, Deep Roads, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hawke brothers, Illness, Last words, Other, Sickness, pre-game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 04:07:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtomicPen/pseuds/AtomicPen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He couldn’t save them. For all his skills with his hands, all the magic running through his arteries and skin, he still couldn’t save them. His father was the first—a corruption in his lungs, drowning him from inside, beyond where anyone could reach to stop the rising flood in his chest. All he could do was hold his hand in the end and listen to the shuddering breaths that wracked his father’s body until it stole the last of his words from him.</i> </p><p>  <i>After that, everything else seemed to come apart at the seams.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Last Words

His breath came in wheezes, the liquid in the very bottom of his lungs rattling like waves eating away at one of the underwater caves he used to tell stories about.

Aeron winced at the sound of his father’s breathing, his back turned to Malcolm as he dipped a cloth back into a small basin on the table for fresh, cool water. His fingers shook just slightly as he stared at them, wavering beneath the surface. Moonlight streamed into the room like a silvery snake, curving over the uneven rumples of blankets over his father’s shivering form. Aeron must have paused just a little too long, held his shoulders a little too tight, because his father’s breathing stopped rattling for a moment and he tried to speak, though the first attempt dissolved into a shuddering cough.

Letting go of the cloth and turning instinctively, Aeron’s eyes flew immediately to his father. Only a few days ago, he thought as three quick strides took him to the side of the bed, those coughs would have lifted Malcolm’s too-thin chest off the sickbed, and Aeron would have rubbed his back until the coughing finally ceased and it fell back into quiet rattling. Now, the coughing did nothing but ring what little breath Malcolm had left out of him as easily as Aeron had many times wrung rivulets of water from the cloth—now forgotten on the table. Now, the rattling was no longer quiet between the coughs, and each breath Malcolm took drained more life than the rasps a week ago had.

Aeron dropped onto the chair beside his father’s bed and grasped one of Malcolm’s hands between both of his own. Long minutes passed with Aeron holding that bony, rough hand he knew so well from his youth, almost as if he were trying to hold Malcolm to life through his fingers. The coughing subsided and his father took several hollow breaths, his eyes closed. The eldest Hawke son could feel his father’s fingers tighten just slightly against his own, and his brow steepled up on itself as he looked down on his father’s haggard face. His beard was just as full and wiry as it had ever been, but his cheeks were gaunt, and there were dark bruises under his eyes. Malcolm was a shadow of the man Aeron had always known, the life sucked out of his own lungs in two short weeks.

“Aeron.” His father’s voice made it past his throat without another coughing fit. If nothing else was strong about Malcolm any longer from this corruption, his voice was just as deep as it ever had been, though now it seemed to echo through his entire chest. Aeron rubbed a thumb over his father’s knuckles.

“Father,” he said, willing his voice not to crack or fissure.

“It’s up to you now,” Malcolm, began, and Aeron bit his bottom lip hard enough to taste blood.

“Father, I—“

“You know as well as I… that I won’t survive this. You’re not your mother; you never were.” A surprisingly gentle cough spasm rocked through Malcolm, and ended quickly. “She refuses to admit what’s right before her, but I’m not sure I can blame her. But it doesn’t help anything.”

Aeron had known after the first week of battling the sickness building up in his father’s chest that Malcolm wasn’t going to make it. Neither he nor Bethany could do anything about it, and Malcolm wouldn’t let them send for a proper healer after they both had failed. His eyes fell to their joined hands, unable to say anything in response, seeing how his father’s fingers were like ashen bones already next to his tanned, rough ones. Callouses stood out more prominently on Malcolm’s hands now, the corruption having eaten away the muscle in them until his fingers were nothing but joints and bones and years of hardened skin.

All of a sudden, Aeron felt a warmth surge from his father’s fingers into his, and those ashen bones of Malcolm’s tightened with a strength he hadn’t been sure was left in them. A shiver slid up Aeron’s spine.

“Look at me, son.” The voice was strong again, not just an echo of what it had always been, and Aeron automatically looked up to meet his father’s face. Malcolm’s amber eyes were molten now, as if they burned with the fire of magic from within. Aeron’s breath caught in his throat—not because he had never seen such a thing before, but because he knew the end was very near. This was some hidden reserve of strength that he knew deep in his bones that would draw the last of Malcolm’s rattling breaths away on the winds when it was over. His throat constricted.

“Aeron, I know that you have taken all I taught you in stride. You’ve seen it as your duty, and thankfully, one that you seem to enjoy. But that isn’t the most important lesson. This is the most important thing you can know, that you can do.” Malcolm stressed his words, and Aeron could taste the magic in them as they left his father’s mouth to enter the air of the room. “You know that I am dying. You know this is the end, I can see it in your eyes. You must not be afraid, my son. You must never be afraid to know when someone’s death is near. And you have to be able to give it to them, if need be. Protecting those you love isn’t always about what you can do for them, but what you have to give up for them. The hard things you have to do in order for them to survive. Your mother could never quite understand that, not even for all that she has given up over her life.” His father mused, voice dropping in volume for a moment, his lips dry and stained with blood from the coughing, and Aeron thought he was done, but he continued. “You already know when to let death take what is owed her, that much is evidenced now, but the hardest test is when you must play her messenger. And knowing when it is necessary.”

His father looked at him as if for an answer or reaction, but when Aeron tried to speak, his voice caught in his throat. Malcolm’s fingers once again tightened around his own in a final squeeze.

“Do not worry, Aeron, my little boy. My wildling child.” His father’s voice softened with affection and the strength in his voice waned, a deep cloud finally passing over the face of the sun that had always been there to light Aeron’s life. “I know you, and I know that you have…” His voiced dwindled and diminished like a flame guttering beneath a stream of water.

Aeron watched as the magic in his father’s eyes slipped away, and the fingers he held slackened. Malcolm’s head fell back further into the pillow, and his eyes unfocused entirely somewhere over Aeron’s shoulder. Hot tears streamed down Aeron’s face as he clung to his father’s hand.

“I know,” he repeated in a thick whisper. “I know, Father.”


	2. The Deep Roads

Aeron didn’t know at first; Carver was always good at hiding when he was sick all his life, and the taint from the darkspawn was no different. And it seemed to affect him most slowly than it did Wesley—perhaps it was his size? Or maybe his wound wasn’t as bad as the Templar’s had been. Whatever the case, it was a day or two before Carver started to lag behind the others, which caught Aeron’s attention immediately. His brother, for whatever reason, always considered himself in some sort of competition with Aeron, and was never one to be left behind to begin with. Aeron stopped their party to see what was the matter, and that’s when he noticed the subtle darkening of the veins in Carver’s neck and upper arms, the overly dark hollows around his eyes. Worst of all were his eyes themselves—normally a bright sky blue, they seemed dull and grey, and Aeron was terrified that it wasn’t just the light of the Deep Roads casting a shadow over them.

“Why didn’t you say anything, brother?” Aeron asked him, his brow knit and the corners of his mouth turned down in concern.

“What good would it have done? We’re nowhere near the surface and you would’ve made a big thing out of it,” Carver replied, trying to sound stronger than he felt. “Like you’re doing now.”

“There might have been something we could have done!” Aeron protested. “I’ve got some healing skill, and we’ve got Anders with us—he was a Grey Warden, so maybe he could have—”

Before Aeron finished his thought, Carver collapsed down to one knee, sweat breaking on his face and his breathing laboured. Aeron instinctively went to catch him, though most of what he did was more to steady Carver rather than catch him entirely.

“Carver!” Aeron’s eyes darted from his brother to Anders. “Anders—please tell me there’s something you can do!” His heart was in his eyes, the twisting pain on his face as clear as sunlight to the former Grey Warden. The other mage hesitated only briefly before he answered.

“Well… there is one thing that might work, but…”

There was a thin thread of hope and Aeron latched onto it as if he were the one dying instead of Carver.

“Yes, please, anything,” he pleaded. “ _Anything_. I cannot let my brother die.” His words were emphasized by the quiet groan Carver gave as his strength gave up a little more and he leaned into Aeron.

“Then follow me.”

Anders helped Aeron get Carver back on his feet and got him walking again. At first they were bearing nearly the whole of his weight, his feet dragging along the ground every other step. After a few minutes, Carver seemed to pull a little strength from some reserve and was able to walk more on his own, with only Aeron’s help, leaving Anders free to lead them without worrying about dropping Carver’s bulk onto the stone ground. Within a couple of hours, Anders pointed.

“There. The Grey Wardens should be right around here, if this map isn’t wrong.”

“And if it is?” Varric wondered in half a mutter.

A pained look crossed Aeron’s face, but he just kept moving, bringing a weakening Carver along with him. Anders gave the dwarf a venomous look and followed after Aeron.

“Hello,” Aeron called out to the small group of Wardens ahead of them in the Roads. They turned at the noise, surprised. Walking back to meet them halfway, the Wardens eyed Carver, all of them knowing what had happened to him by his look.

“Stroud?” the healer said with a little startlement.

“Anders,” the man in front said, his voice even and cool. “Didn’t expect to see you down here ever again.”

“Yes, well, strange things happen.” Anders cleared his throat. “We’ve got a problem,” he told the Wardens, motioning to the sweating Carver. “A Grey Warden sort of problem.”

“I can see that,” Stroud replied, walking closer to Aeron and Carver. “And you want us to help?”

“ _Please_ ,” Aeron implored, searching the Warden’s face. “He’s my brother, and I will do anything to keep him alive.”

“Brother…” Carver got out. “Maybe… I can see Bethany again. You know? Might not be… too bad.”

“Carver.” Aeron’s voice was frightened at the fringes. “Carver, don’t talk like that. You’re going to be okay.”

Stroud watched the brothers a moment, then spoke again. “He’s fairly far along, we can’t be sure the ritual would even work with that much taint in him. And it’s a precarious gamble to begin with.”

Aeron looked from Carver back up to Stroud. “We’ve got to try.”

Glancing back at the rest of the Wardens, Stroud let out a small sigh. Turning his gaze to Aeron, he nodded, stepping closer. “Very well, let us take him.”

Carver protested weakly as he was handed off from Aeron to Stroud. “You will probably never see him again, even if he survives, you know,” he told Aeron.

Aeron nodded, grave. “So long as he’s still alive, that will be enough.”

“Aeron…” The elder Hawke brother immediately went to Carver, a hand resting on his arm.

“You’ll be okay, Carver. You’re strong enough to survive this. What’s a little darkspawn blood to the Hawke brothers, right? You’ve got to pull through this.” Aeron’s voice broke just a hair at the last, and the brothers’ eyes met. Neither said anything else.

“We’ve got to get moving if we’re going to have any chance at all,” Stroud reminded him softly.

Aeron let his hand drop and stood aside, his eyes never leaving his brother as the Wardens took him away, down the Deep Roads, until they rounded a corner and were out of side. Anders came up behind Aeron and put a tentative hand on Hawke’s shoulder. He wasn’t sure if he was expecting Aeron to ignore him or flinch or what, but instead Hawke let out a breath and closed his eyes, turning away from the directions the Wardens went.

“Okay,” he said, his voice even once more. “Let’s get out of these blighted Deep Roads.”

Not a word more from Aeron was said about his brother or the fate Aeron had decided for him, despite both Varric and Anders trying, but both knew he ate sparingly and hardly slept all the while, instead sitting up and staring out into the dark of the underground.


End file.
